Error installing Fedora 16
 

Hi,

I tried installing Fedora 16 a few times on my PC but while the installation is in process, I get 'Couldn't install boot loader' error message. I have Windows XP on sda1 and I was trying to install Fedora Core on the rest of the hard drive (unpartitioned space). I tried the option to 'install fedora on free space'. I also tried setting the partitions manually. I am sure the installation media is fine because I installed Fedora 16 on my netbook this after without any issues.
Thank you!

Hya,

I only can guess, however, you may want to check if bootable flag is related to your problem.

I think Fedora doesn't write to my boot partition. I found an article about this. I installed Ubuntu 11.04 and it worked fine. I really wanted to give Fedora a chance but I guess I will have to stick to Ubuntu.
Thanks!!!

ceantuco
you might want to do a bit of research on
1)setting the boot order in the bios
2)dual booting with XP
( this IS VERY VERY different than with vista and 7 - you NEED to look at the 5 to 12 year old how to's and change them for the use of a 3.5 floppy )
also if you do have a 3.5 floppy on the xp box fedora 16 will not detect it unless you manually set it up to do so .


where did YOU tell the fedora anaconda installed to install grub ???
and what was the boot order at the time
is this old xp computer even capable of running fedora 16 ?
fedora 16 NEEDS a lot of ram ( 2 gig min. is recommended )and a very large /boot partition about 1 gig in size ( this is for preupgrade).

Hi John VV,

Thanks for the response. My system is a Intel Dual Core 2.6 with 1TB of HD and 4GB RAM. I run XP because I have a few applications that don't run on 7. (I hate Vista) At one point I had XP and Ubuntu working. The first time I installed Fedora I let create the partitions by telling it to use the next available space. (150GB of Unpartition Space) but the grub installation failed. Then I tried creating a sda2 for / directory and sda3 for swap but the same error occurred. Do you think if I wipe out my XP and reinstall it and then try installing Fedora it would work?

ok so this is a new machine
you wiped out 7 and put xp on
did you also remove the " hidden to windows" recovery partition that the OEM put at the front of the drive the win7 MBR in on it


for XP your best bet is to let xp have the MBR and put grub on the FIRST linux partition
then use the "dd" method to copy the 512 bit image of grub to the windows "C:\\ " and use the xp boot.ini to dual boot
( the old xp how to's have you put the "fedora.img" or "linux.bin" image on a 3.5 floppy )

but seeing as fedora can read/write to the windows drive just copy/paste it


for a xp / fedora only install i would
reformat the drive
make about 1/2 into a ntfs ( one primary of the 4 "hda1"
leave the rest blank or set to ext4
install xp
install fedora on the ext4 1/2
select the "custom" install and custom location for grub
install grub to hda2
/ to sda3
extended partition
/home to sda5
and so on

Grub1 grub2, mbr etc.
Often, if trying to replace one linux operating system with another, the MBR if from an incompatible grub, and not the xp, vista or w7 mbr, this results in the installer software not knowing what to do. So it does nothing and tells you that. Here is how I would fix it.
I would run a livecd (fedora is fine), and install gparted (sudo yum install gparted). Explore Gparted and therein I believe there is a command to recreate the mbr, and even recreate the partition table. The alternative is to use the XP recovery disk (the one you used to install XP and redo the mbr. Only do this XP thing if xp will not boot.

A problem as well is if you are letting Fedora do the disk layout. It will use lvm (Logical Volume Manager), and will insure that boot is of sufficient size to hold the grub2 stuff and other files needed to boot.

Beyond doing the above, we would require more information to help you resolve the problem

Hi Guys,

I did everything suggested above and now my Winxp partition doesn't boot. Before that, I installed Ubuntu 11.04 and it worked just fine. But I want Fedora on my system. I also tried repairing my WinXP partition with the installation disk but it seems like the installer can't write to the MBR. Weird!!! Anyways, I copied my personal data to an external HD, Zeroed out my entire drive and well tonight I will install W$ndows 7 (I need W$ndows to run my job's applications) and then I will install Fedora 16. I'll keep you guys posted.
Thanks for all your help!

**Fedora Installation Update**

Hi Guys,

After deleting my whole hard drive and reinstalling W$ndows 7, I was able to install Fedora 16 x64 without any issues. I think there was something messed up with my boot partition.
Thank you all for your help!